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If you read Rogers Ailes' dialogue on ABC's This Week, you will see just how entrenched his rhetoric is with what Fox News, the Teabaggers and the GOP puts on the air day in and night out. His own words are an indictment of his politics and the station he falsely calls "fair and balanced."

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AILES: Well, they tried to ban us. They tried to break the pool, but the other networks stepped up and protected Fox on it, because it was tortuous (ph) interference with a contractual relationship and sort of tramping around on the Constitution...

WALTERS: But now you're OK.

AILES: We're fine. I mean, we were -- it was not as bad as it was played, and things are not as great (ph) as they should be, but we have a good dialogue. And I saw the president and his wife at the media Christmas party. They were very gracious, very nice, both of them. And we have a dialogue every day with them.

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Lies...

WALTERS: What advice would you give to Barack Obama?

AILES: I think he's in a very tough spot. He is enormously likable and I think despite what everybody says, people would like him to succeed. But he came in with the belief that the radical change he wanted or what some people say is a radical change that he wanted would be widely accepted.

WALTERS: But give him some advice, boom, boom, boom now.

AILES: The first advice I'd give him is listen to everybody and then go in a dark room by yourself, because in the end, it's all going to happen in your brain. If you actually believe all these things that you're for, and Richard Neustadt in "Presidential Power" explains that the only real presidential power is the power to persuade the people, to be open, to go out to them and say this is the reason I believe this, this is the direction I believe the American people should go. If he doesn't do that and I don't think he can sell some of his programs. I think he has to become president of all the people and I think he's got to go to transparency and I think you'd be surprised. People who are willing to give him the benefit of the doubt, but you can't do this in back rooms surrounded entirely by political consultants.

He is the president of all the people.

HUFFINGTON: Well, Roger, it's not a question of picking a fight. And aren't you concerned about the language that Glenn Beck is using, which is, after all, inciting the American people? There is a lot of suffering out there, as you know, and when he talks about people being slaughtered, about who is going to be the next in the killing spree...

(CROSSTALK)

AILES: Well, he was talking about Hitler and Stalin slaughtering people. So I think he was probably accurate. Also, I'm a little....

HUFFINGTON: No, no, he was talking about this administration.

AILES: I don't -- I think he speaks English. I don't know, but I mean, I don't misinterpret any of his words. He did say one unfortunate thing, which he apologized for, but that happens in live television. So I don't think it's -- I think if we start going around as the word police in this business, it will be...

As we've noted, Roger Ailes lied through his teeth about Glenn Beck.

AILES: If you say -- if (inaudible) words are in the Constitution, if the founding fathers managed -- they didn't need 2,000 pages of lawyers to hide things, then tell, then tell...

KRUGMAN: Oh, come on. Legislation always is long.

AILES: ... then tell people it's an emergency that we get it, but it won't go into effect for three years. So you don't have time to read it, you...

---AILES: But there are 300 million people who have a health care plan that they are happy with. There are about 30 million people who don't have a health care plan. So as an executive, what do you do? You go fix the 30 million. You don't go over here and upset the apple cart for 300 million...

KRUGMAN: Which is exactly what the plan was.

AILES: No, no, no...

KRUGMAN: It was trying (ph) to leave the employer-based health care...

(CROSSTALK)

AILES: ... $500 billion away from old people.

He parrots the GOP's claims about health care. 300 million people don't have heath care and the HCR is not just about helping the 30 million people that don't have health insurance. It's about lowering costs, not kicking people out of a plan, doing away with pre-existing conditions. He's promoting the fearmongering that old people will not be covered and die too.

---AILES: Safety and sovereignty of the United States, and I think people, when they see a guy get all the way over Detroit to (inaudible) his underpants, but he could have, and now we're in a situation where we're going to have to either -- we took every body's shoes off; now we're going to have to take every body's underpants off. But the fact is, that's not going to stop. We've got to get much tougher. We've cut the hands off the CIA. We can't -- it's the Norwegians that are doing this. We know who it is. We can't seem to say it. So sooner or later, we're going to have to toughen up on all this stuff. And the American people know it, they feel it, and they're worried about it.

He uses Peter King's lunatic rantings about the underwear bomber. Another GOP trick.

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AILES: I thought he did a pretty good job of delivering his speech. He seemed to get a little bit of his energy back. He'd fallen away over the last few months. You know, he did some dumb things, like take on the Supreme Court. But the media saved him and blamed it all on Alito. But you know, that speech, he's got to follow it up with his -- look, there is an easy way to get it done. I went to the White House one night because I had to meet with Ronald Reagan. And there was a lot of laughter down at the end of the hallway. I waited about 10 minutes, and out came Reagan and Tip O'Neill, arm in arm, with a drink in their hand, telling Irish jokes. In the paper the next day, they kind of trashed each other's ideas, but they obviously cut some kind of a deal.

And that's, you know, there are ways. If he wants to invite the four Republicans and four Democrats over to the Super Bowl and say, come on, guys, we've got to get some jobs...

(CROSSTALK)

HUFFINGTON: He tried to do that. He wasted three months...

AILES: No, that's the way it gets done.

Obama has to do it the Republicans' way or else.

And if there's one thing he knows, it's conservative victim-hood:

AILES: He's tried to get Republicans to agree with him, there's no question. And the media will report that -- what they say is a Republican is evolving, as if he's a caveman if he leans towards the president on something.

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AILES: I have no -- no idea, no idea whether she even wants to. I don't think she -- she knows. I mean, everybody hates her who's ever written a book because they didn't sell many. She wrote a book and it sold two million in two weeks, and so now they hate her, they have a new reason to hate her. I don't know...

Everybody hates Sarah because she sold a lot of books.

WALTERS: But you hired her to be a commentator. Do you think -- so you must think she has some qualifications? She seems to be very popular with certain groups. Do you think she has the qualifications to be president?

AILES: Fox News is fair and balanced. We had Geraldine Ferraro on for 10 years as the only woman the Democrats ever nominated. Now we have the only woman that the Republicans nominated. I'm not in politics, I'm in ratings. We're willing.

HUFFINGTON: Roger, you clearly are in ratings, but if you are in ratings, can you explain to me why Fox went away from the meeting the president was having in -- why did you go away, 20 minutes before the end?

AILES: Because we're the most trusted name in news.

He's trying to be a Kingmaker and he's grooming Palin to run for president. Talking about ratings is a joke. And he has the audacity to boast that FNC is fair because he hired Geraldine Ferraro.

What head of a news organization would go on the air and expose their own political agenda as far as he did? Fox News is an exact reflection of Ailes himself: an odious, compulsive liar.

A modest proposal: Please, somebody needs to throw a boom around Liz Cheney.

Open Thread below...

 We've been covering this story for a while now, but this is wild...

When Mattel Inc. recalled nearly a million toys manufactured by Zhang Shuhong's company, he fought hard to find a way to resume sales to America. They were the lifeblood of his firm, Lee Der Industrial Co., Ltd., and its lucrative share of the export boom driving China's economic growth.

But as Zhang's factories in the southern city of Foshan lay idle, workers started drifting off, fearing they would never start up again. Then Chinese authorities sealed Zhang's ruin by announcing Thursday that he was prohibited from exporting toys until further notice because of the defects denounced by Mattel.

Zhang was found dead in a company warehouse two days later, colleagues said Monday, apparently having hanged himself in despair. His death dramatized the high stakes in an international scare over unsafe Chinese products and an increasingly vigorous government crackdown designed to restore confidence in the vital export industry...read on (h/t Kathy)

NOLA Left Behind

David Gregory's report is saddening. Bush tells the people that everything is doing great: "It's a heck of a place to bring your family," but that's not the case at all. The people are very upset over what is being done-which is not much.

Download | play -WMP Download | play -QT

Bush talks about a building boom and how exciting it's going to be. Is he kidding? They are facing the worst time of their life and he's putting a happy face on it. People that I've talked to down there are very angry and disillusioned.

Resident: I've done everything America has asked me to do. I've raised three children independently-without federal assistance-I paid for a home...

One third of Gulf Coast displaced went uncounted by FEMA

U.S. lawsuit could dent global war-contractor boom

You know I've been following civilian contractors for some time when I posted the " Trophy video."

Now there's this:

Lawyers and military experts say the case highlights legal grey zones, a lack of regulation and little oversight of a booming global industry believed to bring in more than $150 billion annually. Civilian military contractors now perform scores of functions once restricted to regular troops, and a trend towards "privatizing war" has been accelerating steadily.

...The suit against Blackwater says the company broke explicit terms of its contract with the men by sending them to escort a food convoy in unarmoured cars, without heavy machine guns, proper briefings, advance notice or pre-mission reconnaissance, in teams that were understaffed and lacked even a map

According to Peter Singer of Washington's Brookings Institution, private companies that sell warfare-linked services to governments represent "the corporate evolution of the age-old profession of mercenaries."

The firms involved bristle at the term "mercenary," which evokes images of white guns-for-hire working for African dictators and staging coups and countercoups on behalf of the highest bidder.....read on"

The Daily Sandwich

This article was brought to my attention by my favorite red-state Republican-- let's call this individual "X." The story, in Newsweek, is called "Does the Future Belong to China?" Now, economists have been taking seriously the decline of America for well over a decade now (Japan was the first country to scare us). The economic boom under Clinton assuaged the fear for a while, but many factors have contributed to a new concern.
Here are a few of them:
1. The falling dollar
2. The rise of the EU, China and India
3. The amazing colossal trade deficit
4. The amount of dollar reserves held by other countries (e.g., Saudi Arabia and China)
5. Outsourcing of American jobs

These have put the US in an awkward position, and all of them have gotten worse under Bush. Strange, considering that the above concepts are often the meat and potatoes of Republicans-- a strong America, national self-sufficiency, xenophobia, and a continued position as the world's only superpower.

In short, this should be a golden opportunity for Democrats. Not only does it have appeal in terms of the economic betterment of America's working class, but it's a chance to talk tough on American strength in the international community. You'd think the "tax and spend" left would be the ones to get us leveraged up to our eyeballs with loans from communist and totalitarian regimes. Nope, it's the GOP.  Read on...

Sibel Edmonds to Supreme Court     Global News Matrix

An FBI contract employee who was fired after alleging national security breaches within the bureau's translation service plans to appeal to the Supreme Court

to lift a gag order that she has been under for almost three years.

Here are a few of them:
1. The falling dollar
2. The rise of the EU, China and India
3. The amazing colossal trade deficit
4. The amount of dollar reserves held by other countries (e.g., Saudi Arabia and China)
5. Outsourcing of American jobs

These have put the US in an awkward position, and all of them have gotten worse under Bush. Strange, considering that the above concepts are often the meat and potatoes of Republicans-- a strong America, national self-sufficiency, xenophobia, and a continued position as the world's only superpower.

In short, this should be a golden opportunity for Democrats. Not only does it have appeal in terms of the economic betterment of America's working class, but it's a chance to talk tough on American strength in the international community. You'd think the "tax and spend" left would be the ones to get us leveraged up to our eyeballs with loans from communist and totalitarian regimes. Nope, it's the GOP. Read on...